Routine Morning for Murderers
by Breaking Bunnies
Summary: "Have you heard," she asks one day, "of plastination?" [Don't Hug I'm Scared, Paige the Notebook/ Tony the Talking Clock]


Title: A Routine Morning for Murderers

Fandom: : Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

Cover art credit: jengoci on tumblr

Warnings: Violence, references to death, written in January of this year and unedited.

Original notes: Some scrapped Padlock nonsense/headcanon dump because Gaby said she wanted to read it…and then she liked it. At least I have a pretty good feel for how I want to write Tony and Paige now. And some practice with second person. Haven't written that in forever.

_Anyway,_ here's what I imagine a pretty average morning/lunch-break for Paige and Tony looks like.

__Note: You probably shouldn't look up plastination if you're sensitive to body horror. __

_-X-_

"Have you heard," she asks one day, "of plastination?"

Why, yes, you have: University of Heidelberg's Institute of Anatomy, 1977. Before, you'd thought you had already seen the full scope of animality's drive to preserve themselves—to stop death, and when that failed, to stop time. To stop you. But people have this funny way of surprising you in their intelligence and their stupidity and their cruelty and their compassion, as though they are actors unwittingly auditioning for a play of your direction.

Today, though, you are in no mood for them—but at least the sounds of thumping above you, the three whose house you and her have intruded upon getting ready for their university classes, are nothing compared to your annoyance with her. Her bright voice acts as a bug caught in your gears.

You shrug and snap your newspaper, circling with your pen the new park opening up today, another party to crash. And curtly lie. Though you do this task with no joy, puncturing the paper. You need more coffee; You need Paige to hurry up with breakfast.

You_ overslept—!—_this morning, which could mean your pocket watch heart is starting to practice what you preach, or any other number of dreadful things.

Like maybe she's been tinkering with it again. Probably so. Still, if nothing else, having to reset it so often isn't likely—

"Oh, Tony, can't you be more creative than _heart failure?"_ She asks, as somewhere underneath her dress is a petticoat of papers. On one slip is a memory of you spilling your fears, and the line that is highlighted and cornered with stars of later observation is the night your wanderlust brother died with his heart out in his hand. "You could be hit by a _train,"_ she says, stirring orange egg yolk about a pan, "or struck my lighting while out in the _rain,_ or get killed in a blaze when you take the wrong _plane…" _

You clear your throat loudly, but on she goes, listing off any death that she can possibly force to rhyme. Brain short-circ'ing from pain as you realize what a stain on animality you are as feebly you run, like the bulls in Spain are after you, or maybe an old man with a really big cane comes at you and—

You clear your throat again, a sound like an alarm clock going off, slam your coffee cup onto the table. The black pick-me-up splashes unto newspaper and tablecloth. Cursing, you yank out a handful of napkins from the basket by the vase centerpiece, soaking your gloves as you…

Again with the alarm clock sounds, though from a clock that is close to stabbing its lazy owner through the jugular. Paige giggles.

—"Don't forget your toast!" She calls after you, but you don't listen: you're at the umbrella stand by the front door, pulling out a rapier of metal and cogs, your overcoat off the rack. But where—?

"You _need_ to slow down or you _will_ kill yourself. You're—"

"I'm about to be late," you interject through burning cheeks and gritted teeth, trying to shrug on—

Thin hands shove a saddlebag to your chest. Thin, black hands push the _(your)_dagger inside the bag deeper into the muscle between two ribs, into your lungs. Every time. Every time—when it's_ right there_—the pain is so crippling you cannot even raise your rapier to so much as tap her.

"One: you were about to forget your lunch. And on the day I decided to begin themed lunches, now less." Paige sighs. "Two: I had another thing to ask of you…"

Her meaningless words dissolve as you fall through the bottom of space.

—X—

"I'll ask you when you get home from work, _grincheuxeuse clog." _

"I believe the French word for 'clock' is _horloge."_

Paige giggles, kisses your forehead, and waves handkerchief in the air as you depart. So long ago, that meant she truly believed you wouldn't come back.

—X—-

You rot her entire garden for that. The smell is still foul, of course it is, but you've gotten used to a great number of things over the aeons. Before you can even work up a sweat in the simmering heat, topiary lions, rabbits, and men wearing a tall, ridiculous-looking hat lay in thick, filemot pools about you.

You hear her lunge for you, but you're ready: with an elegant spin, she's sliding down the blade of your rapier, slipping forward by her own blood and stomach bile. Black ink and a more sickly yellow-green.

"I thought green was an uncreative color…" You drawl, as easily as discussing the weather. "Yet you can't seem to stay away from it," as you gesture a hand out behind you.

"I tried painting them," Paige whimpers, "but the rain washed it all away."

"I guess your _timing_ you off— just like you, darling." Painting plants, yes, that reminds you of something. One of her favorite time-wasters, which you'd only managed to slog through owing to curiosity (and the fact that it was one of those days you, as strangely it may seem at the moment, you genuinely wanted to make her happy).

Her blood is flowing onto your glove, thick locks of hair wearily reaching towards you, barely managing to keep themselves raised, let alone able to wrap around your neck. You lean into her, whispering in her ear, "How is a raven like a writing desk?"

She gives a tiny, gurgling titter; the ink carving rivulets into her chin stains your suit.

"I'll need"—And she dies.

—X—-

"I'm not very good at questions with one answer."

"And questions with more than one answer just waste the time."

She gives a noise between a titter and a snort and shifts in your lap, turning herself so her side rests against your chest, spreading her legs out so that her toes break out of the shade of the oak tree, the only plant life to survive your tantrum. She loops an arm around your neck, pulling her pencil out from behind your ear and dragging the tip though a curl, changing that section from blue to red.

"Ravens tell riddles, don't they?" She asks.

"Actually, folklore tends to connect them to omens, though the ones around here may, given the circumstances." Why, just last night, the bird's cell phone had come to life—to be quickly chucked out the window.

"And you write riddles at your writing desk." As she explains this, she recolors more strands to bright yellows and soft reds.

You tuck her head under your chin. "I suppose the ancient Greeks did think the opened corpses of birds riddles."

Paige smiles, a curt nod.

She pulls away the hair that has been wrapping around your neck and arms, it together until it is a bun under one ear, where it stays as she removes her hand. "I'm thinking of something beginning with 'P'. Now, what do you think that could be?"


End file.
